Hi, I have a Gateway RC6 Windows Media Center Edition infrared remote control. Gateway slapped their logo on it but the manufacturer is SMK. I hooked it up and noticed that right away, the mute button was working correctly, and in XBMC the arrow and playback buttons worked. However, not all buttons worked, and the volume up and volume down was pretty shaky. I had to press them over and over to get the volume to change just a little bit.

I installed lirc, and selected the configuration for Windows Media Center remotes, and this just stopped all the buttons from working. I uninstalled the package, and still the remote doesn't work anymore. Did I do something wrong? The lirc config window didn't list my specific remote. It's clear from the immediate plug-and-play functionality that my remote can talk to Mint, but I need to know how to get it back, and then how to map the buttons so they correspond to the correct actions, or even to custom actions I determine.

I am guessing that your problem is that it is not actually being broadcast as a remote.What do I mean by that? Well the cheaper remotes actually dont identify themselves as such. More often than not they are actually telling the computer that they are a mouse/keyboard combination and therefore lirc can actually just boggle things up. (In the case of "Apple Remotes" they identify themselves often as a joystick/gamepad)

I have used and configured several remotes ranging from ATI Remote Wonder(s) I/II, Windows MCE and a host of others. None of which used, or required lirc. They all respond as a keyboard.

It should be noted that you may not have to remap keys any longer. You can try putting the keycode from 'xev' (see below) into your xbmc conf files.Also note, the above excludes AppleRemote, Playstation Remotes, and Xbox remotes as I know these will not be used on my system

Running the program 'xev' in a terminal window and pressing buttons will show you how the device is being received

The keycode is the important part. It allows you to remap your keycodes into something understandable to XBMC. Be aware though if you remap something to be recognized as "F8", "F8" on your keyboard will stop working.

Since I have a dedicated media centre this is not an issue for me, but it can be an issue for a multipurpose machine

Thanks for the reply. Sorry I didn't respond. I actually created a new post because I forgot that I had opened this one.

So, in a nutshell, I determined that lirc is working, but once I correctly identified and configured my remote, the plug-and-play audio control stopped working. I used to be able to turn the master volume up and down, and toggle mute, but not anymore.

I started looking into this manually, editing my .lircrc file, but I don't know what command to send to it. Some sources online say to send "amixer set Master playback toggle" but a number of forums online say that this will mute your system, but not unmute it. My own test in the terminal shows that this is true.

So my question now is this: In mint (mate), how do I use lirc to turn volume up and down, and toggle mute, with my IR remote?